BrewDog isn’t your ordinary craft brewer. The Scottish microbrewer rocks the Pink Goldfish of micro-weird. Here are a handful of the things that make them eminently talkable:
1. Crew T-shirts – over the last few years, Brewdog had featured actual negative reviews on staff shirts. “Went to BrewDog bar. Clearly they spend a lot of money making it look like it barely survived a fire.” Some of the shirts are vicious, “Over priced pish. F#cking awful. What a company. Complete hipster paradise.”
2. Shower beers – In 2018, BrewDog launched DogHouse Hotels. The first craft beer hotel. Of course, they are dog-friendly. But my favorite is the minibar next to the shower. Because . . . beer tastes better in the shower.
3. Near beer bar – Early in 2020, the BrewDog AF Bar became the world’s first alcohol-free beer bar. Based in central London, it offers 15 taps of draft alcohol-free craft beer.
4. Beer Advent Calendar – this year the brewery offered the best of BrewDog in one box. A craft beer advent calendar allowed you to unwrap 24 bottles including 14 new beers for 2021, 6 new this Christmas, and 4 online exclusives.
5. Road-kill beer – interested in trying a 55% ABV beer. It takes over seven months to brew. It’s super-limited and expensive. But the thing that makes it really micro-weird is that the bottle is encased in a squirrel. See pic in the comments. Why taxidermy squirrels? According to BrewDog, “We wanted to do something that was at the same time beautiful and disturbing, something that made a statement and tried to make people stop and think about all of the possibilities that beer actually has.”
Micro-weirding is using minuscule actions to differentiate your brand and customer experience. The lesson is that you can set your brand apart without some cohesive master plan; you can be just a tiny bit weird.
And just because something is micro-weird, doesn’t mean it has a micro-impact. The difference between ordinary and extraORDINARY is sometimes just that little weird something extra.
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Stan Phelps walks the walk. He stands out in the sea of sameness by modeling his own Differentiated Experience (DX) message: Differentiation isn’t just about what you say, it’s about what you do and, more importantly, how and why you do it. Stan leverages his unique collection of 5,000+ case studies on customer, employee, and brand experience to engage audiences with informative learning-based experiences. He believes purposeful DX wins the hearts of employees and customers, and differentiation ultimately boosts loyalty, retention, referrals, and results.
Find Stan’s in-person and virtual keynotes, workshops, and Goldfish tank programs at StanPhelps.com.